The metropolis’s decision to allocate about $2.5 million to fund a psychological well being disaster middle for the primary yr of its operation is a testomony to the efforts of a broad-based coalition of neighborhood companions to advocate for humane and compassionate remedy for the weak members of our neighborhood. It is due to our calls for that the administration’s budgetary expenditures lastly match their rhetoric about concern for these scuffling with psychological sickness.

As I’ve said on quite a few events, asking police to answer conditions the place people who find themselves experiencing psychological well being crises and utilizing the St. Joseph County Jail as remedy middle are unsustainable, inhumane. All too typically, this results in tragic conditions just like the one which transpired over the summer time when Dante Kittrell, a person struggling a psychological well being disaster, died on account of a police-involved capturing.